Perfect Competition, Historically Contemplated
@article{Stigler1957PerfectCH, title={Perfect Competition, Historically Contemplated}, author={George Joseph Stigler}, journal={Journal of Political Economy}, year={1957}, volume={65}, pages={1 - 17} }
No concept in economics — or elsewhere — is ever defined fully, in the sense that its meaning under every conceivable circumstance is clear. Even a word with a wholly arbitrary meaning in economics, like ‘elasticity’, raises questions which the person who defined it (in this case, Marshall) never faced: for example, how does the concept apply to finite changes or to discontinuous or stochastic or multiple-valued functions ? And of course a word like ‘competition’, which is shared with the whole…
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